Monster
by Nic.93
Summary: Based off Paramore's Monster- A rift that had the band splitting in two, would seem like the end, right? But it's only the beginning, and are the fans enough to bother regrouping or maybe it was the end-Maybe?  AU/AH/OOC


One shot based off of Paramore's—Monster.

* * *

><p>"I don't really know what I am going to do after us, just know there is no more us. I'm done!" shouted the former lead guitarist, Edward.<p>

He'd finally reached the end of his tether. If the spit fire thought to control the band wanted to call the shots, than fine. 'Fuck them', he thought, and though he wished he had it in him to wish the band hardship, it wasn't true.

The band itself had fought their way to the top for nearly a decade, the fact they'd made it was a testament to their raw talent and their faithfulness to their fans, but sometimes, even the strongest of ties break, and Edward's had just split in two.

He'd miss the band, he'd known them all since he was sixteen, and though he wasn't the first member to leave, he was definitely the first founding member.

"Bro, wait!" his older brother called, chasing after him. There was very little he could really say that would make him stay, actually, there was not a word he could say that would make him.

"I'm done here, Em. This is her dream now, I'm out." Edward said in answer, turning to look at his brother, and the moment Emmett had to say something, anything to keep his little brother with the family—because the band was a family, a dysfunctional, eclectic group of once were rambunctious teens, kind of family, but a family none the less, he was gone, with no more than a wayward glance at the six' three" curly haired, tattooed up like the Vegas strip, drummer.

Jasper was the next out of the studio, but by the time he'd found Emmett, Edward wasn't even in the same zip code. That left, Bella, the only girl in a band full of hope and promise and testorone—she blamed herself.

How could she not have? She pushed for something, Edward told her they weren't ready for, and though on the stage, as the band played their hearts out, Edward had been right. She couldn't handle the sudden attention and heartache, being in the public eye caused her, and above all else, it killed her to lose the one and only other gentle soul in their band.

She had nothing now.

Actually, not quite, what she had was a band full of misfits, a voice that could bury itself in a persons' soul and a flare for music that was unseen in someone as young as her. She just had to find it.

Jasper and Emmett didn't go back to, Bella, it kind of slipped their minds, instead they went home to their wives, who stroked their egos and promised all would be well, they just needed time and Edward would return, only…that wasn't the case.

Days passed, then weeks, then slowly months.

The band members seldom saw each other, Edward didn't ever call and check in, and while the brother's had someone at home waiting and willing to wipe away tears that wouldn't take the hint, Edward didn't ever call and check in, and while the brother's had someone at home waiting and willing to wipe away tears that wouldn't take the hint, Bella had an empty three thousand square feet of apartment all to herself and the woeful thoughts that wanted to dictate her everything.

And it did.

In solitude and silence, Bella did horrible, career shaking things.

Bella, ate the foods she loved, regardless of what they could have done to her voice. She drank alcohol in excess in the hopes it could numb the emptiness that was slowly claiming her and above all else, she was going back on her word.

A solid, binding promise she thought she'd never break, but she did this time, and she would continue to do so.

She went out, she partied, she made mistake after mistake and someone was always there with a camera, heartlessly taking photos of the fallen icon.

Though Edward thought they could survive, he was wrong. Talent and ambition may, to him, have been enough, but with a band that considered themselves a family unit, the only way they would work, was with every member intact.

Two out of four wasn't bad, but when the two that were broken, were the two that made the band strong, there was no hope, and Edward was beginning to blame himself.

What she was doing wasn't that bad.

She was doing anything and everything for the exposure. She was doing so the boys didn't have to. She was doing it, because she promised she'd do whatever it took, take whatever gig that she could land, and she would do it with a smile so they could be successful.

Edward knew that. What hurt him the most, what made him leave was how little she asked for help. How very little she asked advice. How very little he felt she needed him.

"We're not ready for this, B, just wait, six more months, wait for this album to at least drop before you start planning the next adventure." He'd argued with her the day he walked.

"But this may not be there for is in six months, Edward. I mean, what harm could it do. People know who we are, they'll turn up, our fans would hang from rafters to see us, why is this so bad?" she'd yelled back in frustration—Edward's, hers.

Neither one of them had surrender in their bodies, both had a need to dominate. It wasn't even fire and ice, it was fire and fire, or fire and fuel. One needed the other, but neither were open to it. They either wanted to burn by themselves, or they wanted to just be.

"If an opportunity like it doesn't come up in six months, than it would be a sign that we weren't ready, because we aren't."

"We are ready. This proves it. Someone wants us to do this, Edward, someone somewhere. We'll have a track written for it in a few days, a week tops, you and the boys could work out the music. We can do this!" She was so insistent, so sure.

He'd told her she was wrong and that taking on the track would make them '_that'_ kind of band. They would be forever known as the 'Saga' band. The band who only managed to churn out two songs in as many years, because that would be all people ever heard.

It wouldn't have killed them, not by any means, but it would have severely stunted the growth he'd dreamt up for them.

As Edward considered how he could have saved this, how he could have talked the most stubborn woman he'd ever met out of her plan, his phone rang.

"Hello?" he answered in disguised agitation.

"_Hello, the is, Irene, from Seattle Grace hospital, I am calling in regards to Isa_—," Edward couldn't even listen to everything the woman was saying, he knew who she was talking about, Isabella. Bella. What had she done?

"What happened, is she okay? I am Edward Cullen."

"Very well, Mr Cullen. Isabella suffered alcohol poisoning while she was out at a club tonight, there was also suspicions of something being slipped in her drink, though we're still waiting for results to come back, we'll have more information available to you when you arrive. I'll have one of the nurses page Dr. Wikes on your arrival." Irene, said, her voice full of just the right amount, or so she believed, of remorse.

"I'll be there as soon as I can." Edward said, hanging up his phone and grabbing his keys, he made his way to the hospital—the speed limit, only an indicator as to how slow the other cars were going.

It took Edward just under twenty minutes to make the nearly thirty minute drive from his hotel and the whole trip he spent blaming himself.

If he hadn't walked, she wouldn't have become reckless.

If he hadn't walked they'd have more than likely been rehearsing right now, with his brother's too and they'd all be on speaking terms.

If he hadn't of walked, he'd be able to call his brothers and ask them how they were, and not have to text their wives—only one of the wives replied in kind, the other told him to fuck himself up the ass for messing up the only good person in her life.

To Edward it felt like a double sided blade, tearing through the soft skin before stripping muscle from bone.

Bella was already in an exile of her own and one she felt was her own doing. Just like her mother, a woman she swore she'd never grow to be, Bella turned to the bottle. Feeling unloved, unwanted and as if the world and the public were just going to swallow her whole.

Edward walked out of her life, he took the music from her, he took the fame from her, he took the fans from her. She was a victim left in his wake. It would be him they continued to cry for.

Not, Bella.

So her sorrows were left in seedy clubs at the bottom of whatever was on tap, that she used to chase away the hard stuff, or the drinks full of more sugar than alcohol she let men buy her. Only one drink was more dangerous than it's sugar content, a blue concoction laced to the brim of shit that could take down an elephant was, Bella's undoing.

It felt bad going down. It tasted bad going down, but for the first time in weeks, since she'd taken to the reckless party scene, she felt something—only problem, is the something she felt, led to the numb that wound her up in hospital.

"It appears that other then the high level of alcohol in her blood, there is also trace of ecstasy, methamphetamine and a highly concentrated tranquilising sedative." Dr Wikes informed him upon his arrival.

Edward was having the hardest time processing all of this. "Is she—" he tried to get out, swallowing his words around the massive lump formed in his throat, "will she—,"

Doctor Wikes understood what it was, Edward was trying to say, "Her stomach was pumped and right now we're doing everything we can to try and flush out anything else that may still be in her system. If, come tomorrow morning, her vitals are still stable and her tox screen looks clear, she should be fine." And that was all Edward needed to hear before he was in her room, at her bedside and holding her hand.

He'd never seen the small brunette looking, look so physically small before, and sickly. Her skin was a pale white wash, her hair looked thinner, under the fluorescent lighting deep dark bruising could be seen under her eyes from what Edward was guessing was the lack of sleep.

She'd let herself go and it was probably all his fault.

"Edward?" a whisper of a voice asked in the early morning of what seemed like a brighter day, making a brief smile form on Edward's angled features. Bella, thought he looked absolutely stunning, even under the harsh lighting his eyes still shone with a mischievous intelligence. "Am I dead?" she followed with, because to her, even under dire straits she never thought she see him again.

He walked out.

"No, you're not dead." He answered with a small smile, his fingers twitching to play in the ends of her hair.

"Then why are you here?"

"The hospital called—," and Bella felt as though someone had reamed her in the chest with a tyre iron.

"You can go now then. I'm not dead, I'm probably not on death row anymore either." He'd seen this side of Bella, it was the side that made itself known when she felt vulnerable or threatened. It was Bella's inner bitch.

"I'm not going, Bella." He tried to say evenly in reply, though it was hurting him just to stay civil. He wanted to lean over the bed railing and look her in the eye and tell her he was never leaving her side again.

He wanted to promise her that they could work through everything, that he'd call his brothers, apologise to his sister-in-laws and that they could do this.

But it appeared that maybe, Bella, was done. With her back turned on Edward, and a steady stream of tears running down her eyes, she heard Edward leave, and though she didn't know there was much more of her that could hurt—she did have a tube shoved down her throat after all—her whole body ached and yearned.

Maybe she should have let him stay?

Alice and Rosalie, had well and truly had enough of the antics of their family.

When their husbands started withdrawing and they couldn't even get a hold of, Edward and Bella, they knew enough was enough. The only thing that managed to get the attention of the older two Cullen boys were their children, but even then.

Rosalie had had enough of her husband telling her daughter she could be anything she wanted to be, except the lead singer or guitarist In a bad. Luckily the small girl, with her violet eyes and golden curls was only seven months old, so to her he could have been singing the alphabet.

But, Alice, her son was a whole year older, and speaking, though I don't think he properly understood what it was Jasper was saying about a band, he would have more luck recalling them even then his younger cousin—and it was with that the wives met the ends of their tethers.

Whether the band ended up killing each other, it had been six months, they either needed to face each other, or contact their lawyers and have their contract with their producer terminated, otherwise, Rosalie was going to kill them, slowly with a spork.

In the meantime though, the paparazzi and fans were playing where's Waldo. Every search engine was very regularly flooded with people searching 'Bella of Twilight' and 'Edward of Twilight'.

Their hopes to track down the duo was floored every time when the only photos that would appear were happy photos of the band on tour or at any photo shoot, never were they able to find where the two were currently hiding away and fighting their demons, something that probably came down to a great publicist and a production company that did not want to lose such a sell out of a band.

The dream team was dead though, Twilight as a band, had reached midnight and their family were shouldering the onslaught of hate mail.

This needed to be fixed, and fast.

Edward tapped the bar, signalling the bar tender, only to find out he'd need to order again, apparently it was shift change.

He ordered another shot of bourbon and tried to ignore the ogling the ditsy blonde of a waitress was giving him. He knew he could have her, and in every degrading way, but it was not his intent to go back on his word, he wouldn't touch the woman with a ten foot pole, it was merely a fact.

She flirted still though, her eyes darting from the V of his collar, the girth of his arms, the callus on the pads of his fingers, hell, even the ink wrapping dangerously around every free inch of his skin, the skin that was visible at least.

He downed three more shots, before he could take no more of the woman's provocative advances, and he made to leave. "Edward, wait." No! his mind was screaming.

"What?" he asked, his voice furious. His exercise was supposed to go unnoticed. No one was supposed to know who he was, where he was from, and what he's supposedly turned his back on.

There were already enough victims—his family—calling, but he couldn't find it to return their calls, he couldn't even answer them to begin with.

"Your credit card, Sir." She stuttered, and Edward sobered, of course. He took the offered card, avoiding physical content, and then he took off like a bat out of hell.

The girl felt slighted. He paid her no mind, even though she'd done nothing but try and get his advances, but she just sighed in the end. If he came back, she'd try again, but inside, there were plenty more Johns, who she knew wouldn't turn her way.

To the world, after six months of searching and waiting. They gave up. Though the mail, hate mail and the like, as well as the overly sweet, 'please come back', still flooded in. But as the weeks tolled on, the piles starting tipping in the negative.

Each page was filled with an angry scrawl.

The band was full of traitors, villains, though only human—because each member was only flesh and blood, wrapped around a skeleton—the world never saw the tension that grew between the members.

The world wouldn't ever fully understand how much the band was taking from each member, it was as if the world that loved and wanted them, was merely a monster, slowly eating them alive. Taking from them the things they never wanted to surrender.

It started with the band, it spread to their music and then their lives.

What of them was left, what of them was no longer public domain, were they not deserving of a private life, because they wanted to give the world music. It seemed that way a lot of the time.

Alice walked passed her husband, he'd been spending more and more time in the basement studio, only this time when she walked passed, there was music. An angry bass line, that slowly haunted her the more her husband played, it was brilliant, but empty. A bass line without a guitar line was pointless, it was empty, missing something.

A lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist come lead singing and a beast on the drums.

So she ran upstairs, and dialled Rose's number and devised a plan. If they couldn't come together for themselves, well they were going to have to come together for someone else. Some one small, fragile and impressionable.

Their niece and nephew perhaps?

This band was getting cleansed of their demons, by the hell fires known as Rosalie Cullen and Alice Cullen.

Distraught and hurt beyond recognition, Edward made his way to his older brother's house, Emmett the middle brother, something was wrong, or so the text message would as planned, have led him to believe, with his Goddaughter, and the very thought that Edward's absence could have been the catalyst was eating him alive.

Bella was the same. Fearing the worst, she hopped in the fastest car sitting in her garage, and as beautiful and spoiled as it was, it wasn't actually hers. The smell of the interior, mixed with the scent of its owner was a branding iron to her senses, it burned her, the very memory that it was normally someone else, someone with much longer limbs and hands that caressed any and all chords on the guitar because he cherished every note he played.

Though it killed her, she pushed that all aside, winding down the windows, she weaved in and out of the traffic and she rushed to the address she hadn't visited in too many months, nearly a year, though her gear changes were dodgy at first, she managed to remember after five minutes and the forty minute drive was cut down to thirty.

Would her niece even remember her?

Her mind was unsettled, so much so, she didn't even notice the other cars parked in the drive, she didn't notice the flush of her skin as she rushed through the doors, and she didn't pay any mind to the throbbing of her heart when she found her sister-in-law.

Because if she had, maybe her shock wouldn't have been so bad. Her body knew. Her heart knew, but Bella's head was a battlefield of warring dreams and emotions,

"She's downstairs." A solemn, Rose, voiced. "She wanted to touch the instruments, so she's downstairs." Alice was holding on to Rosalie's hand, and after kissing and hugging the two of them, she took off downstairs.

She didn't notice the women following behind her. She didn't hear the creek of the door as it shut, and above everything else, she didn't hear the lock on the soundproof booth slide into place.

Even if she had, Rosalie and Alice would have picked her up and thrown her into the room, head first, without batting an eye. It had been nine months, they'd both watched their husbands slowly become introverts, slowly lose the part of themselves that was brought to life with music and why?

Because their brother and sister in law, were both too fucked up to see how much of themselves was the band and the music they made.

The lights were out in the booth, so Isabella stumbled, moving to the only sound she could hear—gentle strumming on an unplugged electric guitar—Edward's strumming.

Emmett and Jasper were merely silent. Emmett sat behind his drums, Jasper holding his bass. It was amped, but the second he heard the strumming on his Gibson, strumming that was awfully familiar-bit not his own, he knew who was playing, Emmett was the same, so he sat and tried to figure out what it is he could say to his brother, hell, he considered just kicking his ass, but thought better of it in a room that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to get put in.

Bella, sat next to the strumming, and the evil glint was in Rosalie and Alice's eyes. They knew Bella was next to Edward, even if she didn't. Her phone flashing in her pocket was a dead giveaway, and they wondered if she even realised it was going off.

They counted to three, before hitting the lights. The whole studio become flooded and for the first time in months the band was reunited.

"You are all going to work this out, and if you aren't playing something the next time we come down, you're all going to get the wakeup calls of your lives when I ring Carlisle and Esme." Rosalie warned.

"You too, Bella, if I am forced to call Charlie and Renee to talk some sense in you, I will. And you won't like what I end up telling them." Alice, added before she and the Amazon beauty climbed the stairs, and headed into the kitchen for a glass of wine.

They had a feeling they were going to need it, because the parental phone calls they were threatening, weren't going to be easy calls to make. Especially the one to Charlie and Renee, because at least Edward hadn't been hospitalised.

"Edward." Bella gasped, her hand shooting to her mouth to smother the sobs that were waiting just below the surface, as she looked at the haunted looking man beside her.

When she turned him away the first time, he at least looked alive, but what was left of the man in front of her now, was merely the tattered skeleton of fading beauty and it was all her fault. Even his tattoos looked different. Faded and Lifeless.

"Bella?" she heard him ask, but he hadn't turned, he was too busy strumming the haunting chords that seemed to slowly flood the room. She needed to hear more of it, but at the same time, she couldn't listen.

The choice wasn't in the end hers to make, when Emmett amped the guitar. Echoing on the amp sounds that unplugged played with her emotions, with the acoustics of the room adding to the sound she could have cried. The sound was raw, stripped bare of flashy embellishments and catchy drum lines.

His eyes were closed.

Edward didn't want to open his eyes and have his ears be wrong. He'd seen this movie before, he'd heard it too. Over and over again. Her face, her back as she turned it on him and told him to leave. Her voice, raw and broken after having a tube shoved down it so her body could expel the poisons in her body.

His psyche was already fragile, his mind was barely holding together, if he opened his eyes to see nothing there, he'd lose it for sure.

Bella, was hurting, seeing him, but not seeing all of him, it was killing her. Once upon a time, he was her reasoning, he was the answers, he was her damned conscience for lack of a better word, because he helped her see what was real and what was not.

His strength lay in following his word, sticking to his guns and achieving solutions. In the end, all Bella ended up doing was walking the tense tight rope, to get her answers, and she was so sick of falling off.

Edward was always the net, but even he got sick of fixing her messes. The tension she thought she liked, the answer less void she danced around in, Edward hated, despised with a fiery passion, because it wasn't stable.

Edward didn't like people calling him out on mistakes, he didn't make. He also didn't like it when there was credence in their shoutings. When that was the case they got louder, stronger, over bearing and overwhelming.

In the end they were only human, but they were not left to make mistakes the way John and Jane plain would have been. They were called out on them.

The music studio steadfastly filled with more music. Jasper's bass line intertwined perfectly with Edward's riff, almost as if the two had constructed them as so, and as Em listened to his brothers, he found his rhythm and played to it, picking up in beat and tempo and eventually volume.

Bella found her next step obvious, so she picked up a guitar, plugged it in and matched her settings to the ones Emmett had set up for, Edward. She followed Edward's fingers on the fret board, watching the chords he played, before she started finger her own, matching them to his.

Alice and Rose, though the people behind the mirrored glass didn't know, got anxious waiting and instead climbed down the stairs with their wine and watched the people in the room.

They watched the messes of human beings behind the glass with morbid curiosity. They feed off each other, playing their haunting tune, and yet, none of them seemed to want to interact with the other, they were merely coexisting in there.

It was better than nothing, but it wasn't the point of the exercise. Alice and Rosalie wanted their rambunctious musicians of family members back, and if they had to remain in that room, for a week, they'd leave them in there.

And then, Bella started singing. Words that had been forever haunting her dreams, words she forever wished she'd never need to share, but they spewed forth in a torrent, they were real and live and they decided it was time.

_You were my conscience, so silent now you're like water_  
><em>And we started drowning, not like we'd sink any farther.<em>  
><em>But I let my heart go, it's somewhere down the bottom.<em>  
><em>But I'll get a new one, come back from the hope that you've stolen.<em>

Bella's voice had changed a little, it wasn't as practiced, but Rosalie and Alice knew, this was it. They were getting better, they were healing. If the catharsis came in the form of haunting lyrics, then it was what it was.

_I'll stop the whole world, I'll stop the whole world_  
><em>From turning into a monster, and eating us alive<em>  
><em>Don't you ever wonder how we survive?<em>  
><em>Well now that your gone, the world is ours.<em>

Emmett and Jasper, were the first to realise the meaning behind the words, and though they knew Bella needed to get them all out, they didn't like their direction. Who were they directed toward?

_I'm only human, I've got a skeleton in me_  
><em>but I'm not the villain, despite what you're always preaching.<em>  
><em>Call me a traitor, I'm just collecting your victims<em>  
><em>And they're getting stronger<em>  
><em>I hear them calling.<em>

Edward's mind was warring with him. He knew that voice, though not the melody—his fingers had a mind of their own there, but that voice, he'd know it anywhere. Even now, out of practice, he knew.

But could he trust his ears, if he dared open his eyes, would he be able to believe what he was seeing. What would he see?

_I'll stop the whole world, I'll stop the whole world_  
><em>From turning into a monster, and eating us alive<em>  
><em>Don't you ever wonder how we survive?<em>  
><em>Well now that your gone, the world is ours.<em>

Bella, could see the war raging inside of Edward. It was obvious in the way his eyebrows were furrowed, the was his lips were set in a pout and in the way his features just seemed sharper, more angled. She wondered what he was fighting, she hoped it wasn't her and her presence here, because sitting next to him, she realised how very much it killed her to turn him away.

She was finally feeling the semblance of pain he felt, and she hated it and was beginning to hate herself for hurting him. She was hating herself for not having the strength in the beginning to tell him he was right.

Because he was right.

But Edward was feeling all of that for the reverse of reasons. If he'd entertained her ideas he'd not have felt the strain. If he'd humoured her antics, they'd have been fine. Instead, being the man he was, he knocked them down and with each rejection, Bella felt more and more hurt,

The two didn't realise how very much a like they were.

That was the problem.

They were both stubborn and ruled by their emotions.

_Well you thought of straight solutions_  
><em>that I liked the attention<em>  
><em>And not always knowing the answers<em>  
><em>You're gonna lose it<em>  
><em>You're gonna lose it<em>

Too late, he'd lost it.

He lost her, and she'd lost him. There was little else the two of them could have lost that would have hurt as much, but then they remembered. They'd lost their family too.

They'd rejected calls, tuned out interrogations and had at times of duress, sworn they didn't need a family, and where had that left them?

Spending thousands of dollars on hotel rooms, because it hurt too much in the apartments, because they were stupid and thoughtless and reckless in their disbanding, they hurt every person who came to love them.

Including and most especially their fans.

According to the mail, some of them were still faithful, and those few needed gift baskets.

_I'll stop the whole world, I'll stop the whole world_  
><em>From turning into a monster, and eating us alive<em>  
><em>Don't you ever wonder how we survive?<em>  
><em>Well now that your gone, the world is ours<em>

_I'll stop the whole world, I'll stop the whole world_  
><em>From turning into a monster, and eating us alive<em>  
><em>Don't you ever wonder how we survive?<em>  
><em>Well now that your gone, the world is ours<em>

The song finished, the band stopped playing and finally, Edward opened his eyes and what he saw wasn't a figment of his imagination. It wasn't an apparition or a delusion, it was his wife. His Bella, and she was looking at him so deeply, so lovingly, it felt as though the fracture in his heart was mending.

"I'm sorry." The two said, and though it was mainly to each other, the other's in the room and behind the glass took it as their own apology, and they accepted it with open arms and a pot roast.

_**BREAKING NEWS: TWILIGHT IS TOGETHER AND WITH A BRAND NEW SOUND!**_

_**MONSTER GOES DOUBLE PLATINUM**_

_**SECRET WEDDING REVEALED. LEAD GUITARIST AND LEAD SINGER HAVE BEEN MARRIED IN SECRET SINCE THE BAND FORMED—Family and friends finally share intimate wedding photos.**_

The band had never been so successful and in the end, Bella won—though Edward did not get nothing out of the loss, the band did the soundtrack and it was decision the band couldn't find it in them to regret.

Eight and a half months later, the wedded duo welcomed their daughter, 'Hayley Mikaela 'Monster' Cullen, into the world, as well as a new album.

The end.


End file.
